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P13 NOW Singing ‘Sopranos’ SMART mom BACK With the final season just 2 weeks away, we chat with PAGE Edie Falco and Bay Ridge newcomer Lou Martini Jr. Pick a SUMMER CAMP HOME BROOKLYN’S REAL NEWSPAPERS DELIVERED THROUGHOUT BROWNSTONE BROOKLYN Including The Brooklyn Heights Paper, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper, DUMBO Paper and the Downtown News Published every Saturday — online all the time — by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 55 Washington St, Suite 624, Brooklyn NY 11201. Phone 718-834-9350 • www.BrooklynPapers.com • © 2006 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 16 pages •Vol. 29, No. 8 BWN • Saturday, February 25, 2006 • FREE FULL COURT PRESS Ruling could ‘jeopardize’ Atlantic Yards By Gersh Kuntzman “Stuckey said any delay would jeopardize what they say, they are not interested in re- demolitions to go forward. The Brooklyn Papers the project and now the ESDC is using the sponsible development, jobs and housing. At The first structure to come down will like- term ‘screeching halt,’” said Jeff Baker, no point, have they expressed even the slight- ly be the Underberg Building at the intersec- A partial court victory by opponents lawyer for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, est interest in any of the initiatives associated tion of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues — of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project the lead plaintiff in the suit. with this project.” where Ratner hopes to someday build his may end up doing the impossible: sink- “That’s financial Armageddon for Ratner.” Despite its financial trouble, FCR intends 20,500-seat, Frank Gehry-designed home for ing the mega-development before it Baker’s enthusiasm earned a swift and next week to begin tearing down the first of the “Brooklyn” Nets. even gets off the ground. commensurate response from Forest City six run-down buildings on the project site, The team was supposed to move to the This startling news is buried deep in court Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco. DePlasco said. borough in 2008, but that relocation has also documents filed this week by the Empire “The opposition has stated that it intends An appeals judge refused this week to put been put off until 2010, the Newark Star- State Development Corporation. The agency to sue early and often,” he said. “Contrary to a stay on Edmead’s ruling allowing those Ledger has reported. is appealing Justice Carol Edmead’s decision last week to remove an environmental review expert from the project because his prior work for Ratner “tainted” the process. Since the ruling, that process has ground “to a screeching halt,” ESDC lawyer Douglas Kraus wrote in a motion requesting that the expert, David Paget, be allowed continue working on the project while his removal is appealed. “There is a distinct possibility,” Kraus added, “that ESDC may not be able to find / Kathy Willens [a] substitute” for Paget. That would be bad news for Forest City Ratner, whose vice president, Jim Stuckey, had said in court papers submitted earlier in the case that the company is hemorrhaging Associated Press $4 million in carrying costs every month. “[Further] delay would subject FCR to se- vere, irreparable harm,” Stuckey wrote in the Do you see that? affidavit. “These losses would be devastating They’re not crazy, but they were looking for a few loons. Birders … and could jeopardize the project.” fanned out across Prospect Park last weekend for the annual Taken together, the two affidavits give the “Backyard Bird Count,” a national avian census organized by the impression that the opponents’ first of several Audubon Society. The borough’s most-populous bird was the expected legal challenges might make the At- Ring-billed gull, by the way. lantic Yards as wobbly as the Knicks defense. UNION RATS / Sarah Kramer The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn Balloon is organized labor’s only A young Brooklynite views 10 symbolic coffins laid out in front of Borough Hall as part of a Presidents Day Iraq War protest. Ten sons of Brooklyn have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. presence at most building sites 24 marchers, 9 cop cars, drawn By Ariella Cohen The building’s developer, Shaya The Brooklyn Papers Boymelgreen, was persuaded to go While some New Yorkers union at one of his building sites in Manhattan. But at his luxury resi- still follow the jingle’s advice dential developments in DUMBO to an anti-war rally Downtown and “look for the union label,” and on Smith Street in Carroll Gar- you won’t find one affixed to dens, he did not feel similarly com- Brooklyn’s construction boom. pelled. The Brooklyn Papers many police this time,” said Benn was not deterred, how- son Hendricks, of his fellow Last year in Brooklyn, the De- Part of the reason, experts said, is As anti-war rallies go, this Ruth Benn of the New York ever. “When we explain it to anti-war troops. partment of Buildings awarded because Manhattan’s labor locals was hardly the March on City War Resisters League, people, they understood that the Ten sons of Brooklyn have more construction permits than it are more powerful politically, and which organized the coffin coffins represent the very thing perished in Iraq, part of a U.S. had in any year since the 1973. Washington, but the NYPD march — the first such proces- that the Bush administration death toll that’s now close to the projects themselves have tradi- certainly treated it like it The vast majority of these proj- tionally been larger. sion in Brooklyn. doesn’t want us to see: the 2,300 men and women. The lat- ects are being built by non-union Yet even as Manhattan-sized was. Only two dozen war protest- deaths that have occurred be- est Zogby International survey laborers. buildings are increasingly being Seven squad cars, plus two ers — two for each coffin, plus cause of this war.” indicates that the war in Iraq “We’re being hammered,” said built in Brooklyn, union power is cops in single-seat Cushmans, a few stragglers — braved the Of course, image control is continues to hurt President Anthony Pugliese, organizer of / Julie Rosenberg waning in the borough. trailed behind a slow-moving frigid temperatures to make not strictly limited to the White Bush’s approval rating, which New York District Council of Hiring union laborers does con- procession of 10 flag-draped their opinion heard, though not House. A man holding a sign remains at 40 percent. Carpenters. siderably ramp up the cost of a con- coffins from Borough Hall to always understood. Many reading “U.S. soldiers are noth- The poll, conducted before During Brooklyn’s last construction project, but there is still a the military recruiting station on passers-by wondered what was ing but hired murderers” was the Presidents Day weekend, in- struction boom in the late 1960s, huge political benefit to using union Flatbush Avenue on Monday. going on with all those coffins, told he could not carry it be- dicated that only 37 percent of construction union membership Papers The Brooklyn muscle, union leaders say. “We once blocked the en- despite anti-war chants and cause it was too offensive. the country approve of the pres- was around 40 percent nation- While rat balloons are a familiar symbols at Pugliese estimates that his union trance and got arrested, so signs decrying the President “I’m not here to argue with ident’s handling of the war. wide. Now, it’s 13 percent. local construction sites, union labor isn’t. See RATS on page 13 maybe that’s why there were so Bush’s invasion of Iraq. my people,” said the man, Car- — Kuntzman Locally, the result is that only 50 or 60 of the 4,000 residential construction projects green-light- ed last year were built by union hands, according to the carpenters union. Union organizers see this as a historic crossroads in the labor Brooklyn to Dick Cheney: Don’t shoot! movement: After all, the next 10 years will bring more construc- HIS COLUMNIST HAS president for me. Necklace Man was quickly re- ident, is “See rule number 1.” titans who write our energy bills, tion jobs to the city than any pe- minded that Prince Bindar is spying on his fellow Americans riod since World War II, accord- such a deep and abiding re- THE BROOKLYN First of all, several hunt- One shooter did rise to Cheney’s from Saudi Arabia while and, last but not least, being a bad ing to deputy mayor Dan Tspect for the office of Vice ers were eager to inform defense, quickly turning President, that he has resisted the By Gersh Cheney of the Rules of Dubai is the terror-con- the veep’s bad aim into a cardio-vascular role model, but I Doctoroff. Kuntzman nected country that will Yet the trend is clearly moving temptation — succumbed to by so ANGLE Engagement, Brooklyn- screaming monologue digress.) many of his colleagues — to lam- style. soon control American about President Clin- “You don’t drink and hunt — away from union labor, leaving ports. organizers little to do but pump poon the current occupant for Whittington said before Cheney shot “First of all, you don’t shoot into ton’s own errant shots ever,” said a man named Anthony. up their giant rats and walk shooting his friend in a hunting ac- him? “By the way, Dick, do you the sun because you can’t see any- “Iceberg, Ginsberg, on that famous blue “There is plenty of time to drink af- around with picket signs, as they cident. have any idea when we’re going to thing,” offered one shooter, who, it’s all the same to me,” dress.

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